The Effect of Power and Gender on Impoliteness and its Counter Reactions in the Play Ofool by Akbar Radi

The present research aims to study how power and gender affect the choice of impolite strategies and how the addressees react to such face threatening acts in the play Ofool written by Akbar Radi in light of Derek Bousefield’s (2008) model of impoliteness. Although developed based on Culpeper’s (1996, 2005) and Culpeper et al.’s (2003) model, Bousefield’s model was extended to study the addressee’ reaction to impoliteness. Impolite acts are intended to threaten the face wants of the addressees. According to Bousefiled’s model of impoliteness, the offended addressees can choose to keep silent or take an offensive or defensive action which can vary according to individual’s power and gender. The results indicated that the powerful and powerless characters used on-record and off-record impoliteness strategies, respectively. Moreover, the powerful characters and men took an offensive reaction to impoliteness while and the powerless characters and women took a defensive action to impolite acts. The analysis showed that there were no statistically significant differences in the use of impoliteness strategies between men and women.